A prison in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, which is remembered for the torture carried out there during and after the 1980 coup, will be converted into a museum. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the decision on Sunday during a visit to the province.
Erdoğan said the prison was evacuated by its original owner, the Ministry of Justice, and as of Sunday was handed over to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. He said the latter drafted a restoration project for the building. He added that along with the museum, the complex will host a library and venues for culture and arts.
The site, formally known as Diyarbakır Prison No.5, was a vivid symbol of the repression of the military junta that took power on Sept. 12, 1980. In 2016, just a few months before another coup threatened Türkiye, Parliament set up a committee to inquire into the torture and maltreatment of prisoners in the 1980s and there was talk of converting the prison into a museum, though the plans have long been delayed.
The prison housed people wrongfully convicted or detained by the military junta in 1980s, mostly Kurdish political prisoners who were victims of perpetual torture by the prison’s military administrators. For years, it was controlled by the junta and after a switch to a civilian regime, its administration was transferred to the Ministry of Justice.
It was synonymous with torture for many locals who survived their stay there, in a bid by the junta to intimidate the local Kurdish community.
Over the course of two years during the 1980s, a large number of inmates died from torture, infectious diseases and suicide in the prison. Although no official numbers are available, it is estimated that more than 30 people died in that two-year period. Families of victims claim the deaths were not properly investigated or were covered up by officials back then.
Orhan Miroğlu, a former lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), was among those imprisoned in the prison and has provided an account of the conditions in the prison where they were not allowed to take showers for two years and were forced to crawl naked on shards of ice in the courtyard. Bayram Bozyel, who was imprisoned for five years, until 1987, is among the proponents of the prison's conversion into a museum. Bozyel recently told Demirören News Agency (DHA) that the prison is "an important center for memories for Türkiye." "They applied torture methods, perhaps the first of its kind in the world, there. People were subject to unimaginable tortures," he said. Bozyel said he welcomed the conversion and would be glad if the site was transformed into somewhere "where future generations can take lessons from what happened here."
